CARY, N.C. -

Though slower than November, the used-car retail sales market last month was expected to rise 3% year-over-year, according to a late December forecast from TrueCar.

The company was predicting roughly 3 million used-vehicle sales in the final month of 2021, which would represent a 2% month-over-month decline but a 3% gain from December 2020.

And how fast are dealers selling these used vehicles?

Though still far below the spring 2020 turn-time peak of more than 52 days (and early spring 2021 levels north of 42 days), the estimated days-to-turn for used retail sales continues to creep up, according to Tuesday’s weekly Market Insights report from Black Book.

“Days-to-turn for used retail listings slightly increased over the last few months of 2021. Now in 2022, days-to-turn sits just above 38 days,” Black Book said in the report.

The trough was reached this summer, when used-car turn times fell to just above 32 days, the Black Book data shows.

Cox Automotive also touched on the state of the retail vehicle market in the final weeks of 2021 in its latest Auto Market Report video Tuesday from chief economist Jonathan Smoke.

“Using a same-store set of stores selected to represent the country from Dealertrack, we estimate that new and used retail sales modestly gained against 2019 in the final weeks of the year,” Smoke said in the video.

“Even with improving trends, new retail sales for the full month of December were down 33% compared to 2019 and used retail sales were down 24%.”

Elsewhere in the used-car market, though a full-year industry-wide tally was not yet readily available as of this reporting, at least a couple automakers shed some light on how dealers were performing in the certified pre-owned segment of used to close the year.

BMW CPO sales of 23,180 units fell 10.2% in the fourth quarter, but the full-year total of 109,743 certified sales beat year-ago figures by 1.1%.

The MINI brand had certified sales of 1,720 used vehicles in the quarter, a 20.9% decline, but its 10,527 annual CPO sales was a 10.9% improvement.,0

Porsche had a record year for certified sales, moving 30,024 units for a 10% gain. It capped the year with 8,377 CPO sales for Q4, which beat year-ago figures by 18%.